Configure Cluster Parameters

If you have subscribed to Splice Machine via the AWS Marketplace, your
costs will be estimated on an hourly basis instead of a monthly basis:

Screen Help

Many of the components of the Create
Cluster screen, like most of our Cloud Manager screens, include
small information buttons that you
can click to display a small pop-up that describes the components.

About the Cluster Parameters

You’ll notice several sliders that you can adjust to modify the
configuration of your cluster. As you move these sliders, you’ll see how
the estimated monthly costs for your cluster change. Here are
explanations of the adjustments you can make to your cluster
provisioning:

Note that you can come back and modify your cluster configuration in the
future, so you’re not stuck forever with your initial settings.

Cluster Name

Supply whatever name you want for your Splice Machine cluster.

Region

You can select in which AWS region your cluster will reside by clicking the previously selected region name, which drops down a list of choices.

Data Sizing

Internal Dataset (TB)

Move the slider to modify your estimate of how large your database will be.

Internal Dataset is the amount of data that you will be storing within your Splice Machine database.

External Dataset (TB)

Move the slider to modify your estimate of how large your external dataset will be.

External Dataset is the amount of data the you will be accessing from external data sources, using features such as external tables and our virtual table interface.

Cluster Power

OLTP Splice Units

Move the slider to modify your estimate of how much processing power you need for transactional query processing. More OLTP units means more region servers in your cluster.

OLAP Splice Units

Move the slider to modify your estimate of how much processing power you need for analytical query processing. More OLAP units means more Spark executors.

Backup Frequency

Frequency

Select how frequently you want Splice Machine to back up your database. You can select Hourly, Daily, or Weekly; each selection displays additional backup timing and retention options:

Hourly:

Daily:

Weekly:

A Splice Unit is a measure of processing work; one unit currently
translates (approximately) to 2 virtual CPUs and 16 GB of memory.

Modifying Cluster Parameters

We recommend that you spend a few minutes experimenting with modifying
the cluster parameters; you’ll notice that as you increase various
values, the estimated monthly cost of your cluster changes.

When you’re satisfied with your cluster configuration parameters, click
the Next button to set up access to
your cluster.

You’ll notice that when you increase some values, Splice Machine may
indicate that the current setting for a parameter clashes with a change
that you’ve made. For example, in the following image, we have increased
the Internal Dataset size to 20 TB, and
as a result the Cluster Power values
are no longer adequate to support that large a dataset, as indicated by
the striping:

Splice Machine will not allow you to create your cluster if any of your
values clash. You can click the vertical bar at the end of the striping
to instantly set the parameter to the required value.

If you don’t correct the required setting and attempt to advance to the
Next screen, you’ll see an error
message and will be unable to advance until you do correct it.

Configure Cluster Access

Once you’ve configured your cluster, click the Next button to display the Cluster Access screen. The following image
includes displays of the pop-up help information displays for the
different access methods:

You can set your cluster up for access to your Amazon Virtual Private
Cloud (VPC) access by selecting the Client VPC connectivity required
option and providing your VPC account ID.

After setting up any access methods, please confirm that you accept our
terms and conditions, then click the Launch button, which will take you to the
Payment screen, unless you’ve
subscribed to Splice Machine from the Amazon Marketplace or have already
set up a payment method for your account.

Set Up Payment

When you click the Launch button, then
one of these actions happens:

If you subscribed to Splice Machine via the AWS Marketplace, or you
already have a payment method set up on your account, you’ll land on
your dashboard and will be notified when your cluster has been
initialized.

If you don’t yet have a payment method set up, you’ll land on the
Payment screen, in which you can
elect to use on of three payment methods:

Credit Card

ACH Electronic Transfer

Authorization Code

Modifying Payment Information

If you ever need to change your Splice Machine payment information, you
can update it in the Billing Activity
tab of the Account screen; just click
the Update button to revisit the Payment screen:

Start Using Your Database!

The easiest way to get going with your new database is to use our
Zeppelin Notebook interface, with which you can
quickly run queries and generate different visualizations of your
results, all without writing any code. We’ve provided a number of useful
Zeppelin tutorials, including one that walks you through setting up a
schema, creating tables, loading data, and then running queries.

Note that your data must be in an AWS S3 bucket before you can import it
into your Splice Machine database: